In Lindsay’s Stardust Orbit

There may be no low-budget film in 2013 that will be more discussed than The Canyons, a project created by novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis and directed by American Gigolo director Paul Schrader. It stars Lindsay Lohan and adult-film actor James Deen and received funding from Kickstarter. Below, the lead producer of the film, which debuts on On Demand and on iTunes on Friday, August 2, recalls what it was like to work with such a team, and on a tiny budget.

I was having dinner with Bret Easton Ellis and Gus Van Sant, discussing a movie we were developing at the time, in the garden of the Chateau Marmont. A musician friend was always groaning about Los Angeles (The merciless traffic! The unsupressed fame-hunger! The Angelenos!) until he stayed at the Chateau in between weekend performances. It has a decayed subtlety and insularity that makes it attractive to talent. A couple nights in a suite overlooking Sunset Boulevard, never having to leave the property, and the curse of L.A. was lifted. As the martini glasses emptied, my conversation with Bret and Gus drifted from what it might have been like to have a pillow fight with the Franco brothers to how we felt about the mobile-phone app Grindr. As neither topic was requiring much of my attention, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I returned, Lindsay Lohan was in my seat.

I wondered what to do exactly, whether I was going to get my chair back, or if I should find another. It was clear that she recognized Gus and was a fan of Bret’s. She indicated no inclination to move, so I grabbed a wicker chaise and pulled it up to the table. She ordered a drink and lit a cigarette. You simply never know what comet will streak through the Chateau’s stardusted galaxy.

We chatted for a while, and I liked listening to her, the husky, tobacco-aged, noir-ish quality of her voice. I had always been intrigued by her talent. A couple years later, we would find ourselves back at the Chateau, this time talking about a film role. “I know you,” she said, almost accusatorily, remembering our previous encounter. Her surety created this connection and confidence that we were already in this together. By the end of the meeting we had agreed to embark on a film that might resuscitate her career and possibly even open a new path for post-empire filmmaking.

Stephen Rodrick, the astute writer of the New York Times Magazine cover story on The Canyons, got mad at me when I remarked on Twitter that journalists are fabulists. Maybe he was right to take umbrage. The world of Lindsay can make you distrustful of the media, placing you in a carnival funhouse, with concave and convex mirrors distorting everything you say. Much of what I have read about The Canyons isn’t particularly accurate. Some of what is written reflects the agenda the journalist brings to the story. Some is the result of not letting facts intrude on a good tale. Lindsay is my friend, so I have a natural disposition to defend her. The reality I experienced as producer of The Canyons was different than the emphasis of the New York Times article, which isn’t to say that events or facts relayed in the piece were untrue. But there were many consecutive days on set that proceeded without incident, when actors took direction gamely, interpreted the script in ways that were revelatory and compelling, and when we started and finished as scheduled. Sadly, the ordinary work of film doesn’t make for compelling journalism, tabloid or otherwise. Lindsay’s life, on the other hand, has become a public narrative. What was interesting about making The Canyons, though, from a producing perspective, wasn’t the will-she-or-won’t-she of working with Lindsay—she did fine work, and you’ll see that on-screen—but the collision of talent and personalities working in a new paradigm.

The Canyons originated when a film I was producing that Bret wrote and Paul Schrader was going to direct, Bait, lost financing weeks before shooting. During the following months, I kept in touch with Schrader, and he e-mailed me suggesting that the DNA of what Bret writes is ideally suited for a minimal budget—beautiful people in rooms behaving badly. He asked whether I would talk to Bret, with whom I have a production company, about trying something smaller in scale. I did, endorsing it strongly. Bret has, contrary to his novelistic persona, a remarkably easy personality—even when it comes to working with industry people. There are only a couple rules: don’t schedule meetings in the A.M., ensure there is privacy in the restaurant bathroom, and don’t mistreat the wait staff. (The last is hardest to control, given the temperament of spoiled film financiers with trust funds.)

The enterprise of The Canyons, the idea of taking control and just doing it ourselves, excited all of us. We decided that Bret would write an original script, keeping budget parameters in mind. He would limit locations, characters, and stunts, while expanding the story beyond the film-fest genre of characters brooding about their romantic lives. The film would not utilize vérité camerawork, though; it would be more formal. Bret would write, Schrader would direct, and I would produce, and we would all split the cost and ownership equally. When the script was finished, both Schrader and I were bullish on it, enlarging our ambitions. That meant raising more money. I suggested Kickstarter, which felt like scary new territory at that point, pre–Veronica Mars, pre–Zach Braff. I didn’t want my community of peers to think we were reduced to jingling a cup of loose coins outside the Salvation Army.

I was unsure how Schrader and Bret would respond to crowd-funding. They had their professional reputations to consider, too, after all. But they were immediately in. Schrader quickly offered up, as a reward, the inscribed money clip DeNiro gave him on the set of Taxi Driver. Bret agreed to slog through unpublished novels and offer donors capsule reviews. One thing Schrader, Bret, and Lindsay have in common: they are not afraid. Our community was born.

I also suggested that we keep our process transparent, even at the price of revealing some aspects of the production that might be clumsy. If people wanted to post photos, let them post photos. I didn’t want to run everything by a million handlers and useless PR execs and people who, as Didion observed, derived their importance from their proximity to someone famous. Schrader hesitated, relying on advice from more traditional peers to keep things under wraps. Bret supported candor, subscribing to the post-empire paradigm he explained in an essay he wrote for the Daily Beast. Eventually I mentioned Emmy Rossum’s Instagram, which featured her frequent postings from the set of Beautiful Creatures, a film directed by Schrader’s colleague Richard Lagravanese. That did the trick. A few weeks later you couldn’t tear Schrader from our Canyons Facebook page. Nurturing a dialogue with your community of followers via social media was critical for a small movie like The Canyons.

As for building the production, it all happened quickly. Let It Cast, an online casting service based in Paris and Los Angeles, was suggested by Mary Vernieu, a casting director whom I use frequently. We ended up hiring an experienced indie crew, locked coveted locations, and bartered for proper production offices. The line producer, Ross Levine, was invaluable in negotiating advantageous deals with vendors. We grew the production from a lo-fi endeavor into a shoot with cranes, steadicam, extensive dolly track, two alexas, and expensive locations that we rarely paid for and that offered aesthetic value. I relentlessly asked favors of everyone I knew, and we were able to shoot at an architectural home in Malibu with panoramic views of the ocean, the Bar Marmont, the Churchill, Century City Mall, and Amoeba Records. The mission was to film a neo-noir thriller with cinematic elements.

The biggest gamble, though, was our lead actors.

There was a profile of James Deen in Good magazine that revealed the unique space he occupies in the adult-film world. His constituency is, primarily, adolescent girls, not the demographic you think of as typical triple x consumers. Deen is polite, self-deprecating, and non-porny. He doesn’t do drugs or drink to excess and seems comfortable in his own skin. His background—dual scientist parents, one of whom worked at the Jet Propulsion lab—is not exactly in sync with our ideas of a porn-star origin story. I shared the article with Bret, and he was immediately intrigued and began tweeting at James. His casting was thus set in motion. On set James was so punctual, prepared, and naturally emotive that after the third day I completely forgot that we were supposed to be stressed about the risks inherent in hiring him for his first mainstream role.

Lindsay was a different story. Her talent was well established, but her problems continually eclipsed it. We thought of her for the role of the yoga instructor later played by Tenille Houston, and I submitted the script to her via her manager, a friend of mine. Lindsay asked to meet, and Schrader and I ventured to the Chateau (again) to discuss the film. We arrived first and ordered a drink. She arrived late, as we were told she would. She wasted no time exhuming from a luxury bag a well-thumbed script, dog-eared and heavily annotated. Lindsay likes making lists. I still have her suggestions of musical artists and songs for the soundtrack, neatly handwritten on a complimentary pad of hotel paper. With mother Dina at the next table (sitting with the gentleman bearing gifts who notably made an appearance in Rodrick’s Times story), Lindsay announced that she wanted to be in the film, but there was a catch. She refused to play the yoga instructor. She would only participate if she was the lead. I loved the idea.

Schrader, raised in a famously strict Calvinist home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has a darkly pessimistic streak, however. Together we spent the next hour challenging Lindsay, questioning how it could work given the reports of her recent erratic behavior. There was personal money on the line. Will she show up? What about her driving? If she was dismissive of her Liz and Dick director, would Schrader be the target of the same disparagement? Any reasonable person would ask these questions. I couldn’t argue the validity of his reservations, I just felt, instinctually, that she would get through it. I didn’t know it, but she’d won over Schrader, too. The conclusion was foregone. She had already cast her spell. On each of her shoot days, she always knew her lines, always apprehended and delivered the dimensionality of the character. There is a saying that planets reflect light and stars emit it. It’s simple: Lindsay is a bona fide star. In her orbit, however, are some strange planets. Take TMZ, for example. At first I thought Lindsay must have a natural antipathy to the gossip organization, yet their relationship is nuanced and complex and, in some ways, symbiotic. I went on TMZ Live and was prosecuted by Harvey Levin and his lieutenants about Lindsay’s behavior after the Times article was published. Wasn’t she a walking time bomb, capable of suicide-vest moves? Didn’t her antics harm the film? When answering questions about Lindsay you feel like someone has thrust a pinless grenade in your hand.

TMZ would call me with outlandish rumors, such as “We heard the producers of The Canyons”—I was the producer, so I knew immediately whether what they were claiming was true or false—“are going to leak nude photos of Lindsay to drum up acquisitions interest after you were rejected by a festival.” I’d replied that no, I would never do that, and if anyone associated with the film did, it was illegal and we would sue them. But what I said had no impact on their stories. They coax responses from you by making you feel that you are somehow in their clique. They insist they want to support the film, are fans of Lindsay, that Harvey liked what I had to say on the show and that they can be an essential tool for promotion. They claim you are part of the TMZ family. If so, they’re a family that feeds on their own flesh and blood. Hours before James Gandolfini’s death was announced, I got an e-mail from a reporter there asking, cryptically, if I knew anyone close to him. Adding to the surreality, I received a letter from the president of Vivid Video with a proposal requesting that I help cast a porn spoof of The Canyons. This, of course, well before our film has even come out. It was a terrible idea. If I were to participate in the casting, the letter said they would send the porn-star recipient of the role to my office to personally say thanks. I didn’t even respond.

Fueling the growth of tabloid blogs and entertainment-news shows is the paparazzi, which similarly seem constantly subject to Lindsay’s gravitational pull. They hightailed it after Lindsay in a locust swarm when she left our suite at a Santa Monica hotel and followed us to the local mall, where we were trying to steal a shot. Later, filming at my house, their heads popped over the six-foot-tall cinder-block wall in my backyard, whack-a-mole style, cameras dangling around their necks, as a blonde reporter from the L.A. Fox affiliate prepared to issue a live report. Meanwhile, on two separate days a peculiar man lumbered up and down the sidewalk, carrying a bucket. Lindsay recognized him instantly. Between drags on a cigarette her assistant causally observed that he was hiding an old-school camcorder in the bucket. Apparently he follows her around constantly, shooting video, for reasons unknown.

Lindsay is a force of personality. She has a manic energy; she’s like an agitated electron, constantly in motion, moving from one place to the next. In the Malibu house where we shot, we had a bedroom dedicated for her hair, make-up, and wardrobe and that’s where she would retreat in between scenes. Within minutes of her arrival, racks of clothes would be scattered across the room, lists generated and discarded, a swarm of activity instigated. The circumstances of her personal life and the length of time in which she has been famous have combined to create a certain toughness that is evident when you interact with her. Her charm and charisma haven’t left, though, even though she is now so distant from her freckled, teen-movie past. (She wouldn’t even know the way back had she the inclination to return.) What she is ideally suited for, I realized on the set, is modern film noir.

There was only one day of shooting that we had to abort—which, frankly, I blame on Lady Gaga, who was socializing with Lindsay at the Chateau into the wee hours. This sort of occurrence happens when you are Lindsay. Lindsay’s assistant informed me the next morning that Gaga wanted to come visit the set that day, but with Lindsay prostrate on a banquette at the café where we were scheduled to shoot a scene, we couldn’t proceed. We were told it was an earache and sinus infection. Her personal doctor appeared as Schrader fitfully paced around the restaurant. The doctor did a cursory examination and declared her sick. She went back to her hotel room and we sent everyone to the next location.

That day, though difficult, was no match for what happened later in Malibu. I was seated at my computer underneath a pop-up tent outside the location when the second A.D. came racing over with his walkie. “Lindsay needs you on set.”

Production is fraught with peril; you never know what can go wrong. There’s a persistent, low-grade stress at all times. At times you can be summoned to set because an actress doesn’t like the way she is being lit, or realizes she is being captured by an unflattering camera angle and they want you to intervene with the director. The last thing an established director wants to hear is a producer telling him how to shoot a scene. These are tricky, no-win situations that can make your stomach churn. I rushed into the house and began to ascend the staircase when I was confronted by a sight that stopped me dead in my tracks. The room went airless like a tomb. Standing next to the camera, pants around his ankles, stood Schrader. Totally naked.

What. The.

Fuck?

Lindsay, undressed for the scene, had requested the crew get naked as well, on the grounds that she wanted them all to be on an equal footing. Schrader, perhaps not fully sane at that moment, spared the crew and just dropped trou himself. He then commenced to direct the scene. There were no more delays. (It turns out Lindsay had called me to set to demand I strip, too, but I did an about-face and hustled out of the house as fast as I could. Watching James’s prodigious genitalia slapping from thigh to thigh as he did take after take of a nude scene earlier had me committed to keeping my briefs cinched tight at all times. “I’m really not that big,” James once told me. I winced.)

She did win over the crew, despite this eye-watering incident, when she returned from Nobu in Malibu one day with platters of high-grade sushi for everyone. It was considerably more appetizing than the tub of Red Vines and the basket of Harvest Cheddar chips that had filled the craft-services table until then. I never saw snacks disappear so fast.

Now, I’m not saying that Lindsay was a walk in the park. In terms of native talent, pure acting ability, she can be transcendent. You want a performance at a certain level of emotional resonance, and you’ll sacrifice for that. Plus, on some level, everyone in movies is crazy. All that matters is what you end up with. When Steven Soderbergh offered, for free, to edit another version of The Canyons, which we could use or discard with no obligation, Bret and I were excited. Why not, I mean, it’s Soderbergh. Much like the cone of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, Schrader erupted in a volcanic fury at the mere thought. He likes to give me shit about it to this day. I understand his proprietary, Sarris-based auteur perspective, which at times can differ from my Kael, filmmaking-is-a-collaboration one. I try to remain open to anything that might improve a film, no matter the egos involved nor from what quarter it comes. Kanye West told me about Rick Rubin and Daft Punk working on the same Yeezus track, a totally unorthodox move. He simply doesn’t care about anything other than aesthetic excellence.

Film is, of course, a dialogue with an audience. It is not a solitary endeavor. As a producer, you can push as hard as possible toward what you think will achieve artistic truth, yet at the same time you have to consider the economic implications of everything you do. Age-old calculus. When I visited Lindsay in rehab recently, she looked good, healthy. She still had that manic energy and she greeted me on the lawn before leading me to a pond, careful to avoid duck droppings. After a walk around the grounds, she showed me her room, and we sat in an empty community room until visiting hours ended. Fellow patients drifted by, semi-somnambulant. We talked about life, family, and the crazy adventure that was The Canyons. I asked her what she wanted to do in the future. “I want to play Frances Farmer,” she told me. The fallen star of stage and screen, who was institutionalized against her will, had been on Lindsay’s mind. I considered her idea, and told her it sounded pretty good to me.